Last weekend was filled with controversy and the reason for this was a worm hitting many self-hosted WordPress blogs. We warned and urged everyone to upgrade, although the most recent version of WordPress, 2.8.4, was released almost 3 weeks earlier. WordPress 2.8.4 was the second security update for the 2.8 branch in less than 2 weeks. This update was released only 2 days after the vulnerability was discovered, proving how hard the WordPress community has worked to improve and secure the platform.

Ever since WordPress 2.3, which was released almost exactly 2 years ago, every WordPress blogger receives an update notification whenever a new version available is. The majority of new releases are bug fixes and security updates.Personally, whenever I see that yellow new release notification I can not hit update now fast enough. If it weren’t for the security aspect then it is for the ugliness of the notification.

Macheads and Apple geeks already know this, but John Gruber’s blog Daring Fireball is a heavyweight. This sparked a post on Silicon Alley Insider about the “King of Apple Geeks”, which is basically a demonstration in how powerful a blog can be, using the Ninjawords app censorship report as a starting point.

It’s not so much of a news story over at SAI, but more of a success of a fellow blogger report, which is always nice to read. I especially like the raw data which is provided at the end of the story:

John, reached by e-mail, wouldn’t comment on how much money his site makes, but he says it provides his full-time income. He says the site has recently been close to averaging 2 million monthly pageviews and about 250,000 monthly unique visitors — including some very important ones at Apple headquarters. He also estimates about 150,000 subscribers to his RSS feed.

Say what you will, but a powerful and influential blog sure packs a punch. Even if it is minimalistic in its approach and uncluttered by ads.

I agree with Gruber, this is truly a focused blog! The Ampersand blogs about, you guessed it, ampersands. Only ampersands. And you know what? It kind of works, because we’re linking it and so does Kottke and Liquidicity, and probably even more than that. The design twist of it all makes it something anyone remotely interested in typography, logo design, or just ampersands I guess, can at least take a quick peek at. Got to love niche blogging, right?